But I wouldn’t have her.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I wanted to make Sarah feel safe, and wanted, and cared for. I wanted to bring her pleasure, to let her slip away from reality for as long as she needed to. I didn’t know everything about what happened with Wolfgang, didn’t want to know how he violated her, how he stole something so precious from the most amazing woman I’d ever known. All I wanted was to erase those memories just like she asked me to, and replace them with those of a man reveling in the feel of her against him, in the absolute pleasure of being allowed to touch her.
I should have walked away. I knew it, distantly, like a voice screaming from some chamber in the depths of my mind. She was my student. She was too young. I was too old, too broken myself to have a prayer of fixing her. But it was all I wanted, all I could think of or desire as I pulled her to stand with me at the edge of my bed, my lips still fastened to hers.
“Sarah,” I breathed, kissing her again as soon as her name rolled off my lips.
“Yes?”
My hands moved from her hips up to her neck, sliding just under the collar of the sweater she wore. “I’d like to undress you,” I whispered, pulling back until her eyes met mine. Both of us panted, our chests heaving with each breath, and her eyes widened in fear at my request. “But, I won’t — not if you don’t want to. Not if it scares you or if you don’t trust me.” I paused, swallowing as I searched for my next words. “You’re beautiful, Sarah. And I want to show you that. I want to make you feel it — the way I have since the moment I met you.”
The corner of her lips curved into a soft smile, but instead of answering me, she pulled away from my hold, backing up until she was in the low beam of moonlight that streamed through my window.
And with her eyes locked on mine, she tugged the zipper that lined the front of her sweater down, down, slow as ever as it revealed the top of the dress she wore beneath it. Her lips parted as she peeled it off one shoulder, and then the next, letting it fall to the floor at her feet.
It was the most I’d ever seen of her.
Her shoulders were dotted with the same freckles as her cheeks, and I counted each one as her hands fell to the front of her thighs. She bunched them into fists, the fabric of her dress lifting with the motion, and she repeated it over and over, slowly inching the hem of the skirt up until it was in her hands, her thighs and knees exposed beneath it. Then, in one fluid motion, she tugged it up and over her head, letting it fall next to the sweater.
And it wasn’t about her taking her clothes off. It wasn’t about her showing me her skin. That action, undressing herself — it was her taking back the power Wolfgang had stolen from her.
I swallowed, stepping toward her as slowly as I could as my eyes drank every inch of her in. Those freckles dotted her from head to toe, like tiny stars in the dark night sky of her skin. Her hips were wide, her waist narrow, the swells of her breasts humble but absolutely perfect. It was more than I was prepared for, the image of her in nothing but a simple white bra and matching dainty panties. It was impossible to say what I imagined, what I though I’d find if I ever had the chance to see her this way.
She was more. She was always so, so much more.
The shadow of my hand broke the stream of moonlight on her stomach as I reached for her, the rough callouses of my palm eliciting a shutter from her when I finally touched her ribs. My hands nearly encompassed the whole of her as I wrapped them around her, pulling her into me and dragging my gaze up until I found her eyes again. I held her close, trailing my fingertips up over her arm until I framed her cheek once more.
“You are a masterpiece, Sarah,” I breathed. “An absolute deity.”
She shook her head, trying to look down between us, but I held her chin, held her gaze, held her in every way I could as I spoke again.
“You are,” I repeated. “And I won’t stop worshiping you until you see it, too.”
I kissed her to seal that promise, pulling my hands from her only long enough to strip off my suit jacket and unbutton my dress shirt before peeling it off, too. I dropped them both on the floor next to her clothes, and Sarah’s hands slipped over my shoulders, my pecs, trailing down my abdomen and sparking a wave of chills in their wake. She pulled away from my kiss, breathing through parted lips as her eyes danced over where her hands touched me.
“And you say I’m the deity,” she murmured.
I chuckled, pulling her back into the bed with me and covering us with the sheets before I slid between her legs again. I still wore my pants, much to Sarah’s disdain, I found, as she tried to undo my belt under the covers. But I held her hands, pulled them back up until they were pressed into the pillow on either side of her head as I kissed her softly, slowly, with purpose.
“I want to kiss you,” I whispered.
“You already are.”
I shook my head, running my tongue along her bottom lip before I pulled back. “I want to kiss you everywhere.”
I slid down her body, kissing a trail across her dainty collarbone, over the swells of her breasts exposed by her bra, along the length of her long, lean navel. She wriggled under each new touch of my lips, and when I settled between her thighs, moving until the backs of them were on my shoulders and my hands were braced on the top of them, she leaned up on her elbows and watched me with wide eyes.
“I want to kiss you here,” I breathed, sucking the tender skin on the inside of each of her thighs before I hovered over the white cotton of her panties. “Is that okay, Sarah? Can I kiss you here?”
“Yes,” she breathed, wiggling under my grip again. “Please.”
I kept my mouth on her, kissing along her thighs as I gently pulled her panties down. She lifted her hips, every muscle trembling as she did, and I slid her panties over her ass, down her thighs, pulling back long enough to free them of her ankles before I settled between her legs again. The sweet scent of her hit my nose as I trailed one hand up the inside of her thigh, brushing the crease of it before I tugged gently on the soft pubic hair covering her.
“I like this,” I mused, smiling a little at the new chills that broke out over her legs.
My eyes found hers, and then I lowered my mouth, kissing her where I wanted to most.
Sarah gasped as I swept my tongue over her sensitive clit, arching her back off the bed as her fists twisted in the sheets. She let out a long, seductive moan as I swirled my tongue, the tip of it circling her clit before I sucked gently. Her hands flew from the sheets to my hair, tugging in a silent plea for more.
I groaned, running my tongue flat against her before sucking her bud between my teeth again. Her moans turned to whimpers, legs shaking on either side of me the more I tasted her, and every squirm fed my desire.
This.
This was what I wanted — to make her feel good, to make her fall apart with the pleasure she deserved to feel, the desire she deserved to elicit from the man who was lucky enough to touch her. I didn’t know why that blessing was mine, why it was me who got the opportunity to erase what had happened to her before, to replace those memories with ones of ecstasy.
All I knew was that I wouldn’t waste my chance.
Carefully, with as much patience as I could muster in that moment of all-consuming desire, I slipped one finger between her lips as my tongue worked her clit. She sighed at the sensation, and I ran the pad of my finger along her wet slit, teasing her, warming her up before I slipped just the tip of my finger inside her.